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In this paper, we investigate the properties of alternative monetary policy rules using four structural macroeconometric models: the Fuhrer-Moore model, Taylor's Multi-Country Model, the MSR model of Orphanides and Wieland, and the FRB staff model. All four models incorporate the assumptions of rational expectations, short-run nominal inertia, and long-run monetary neutrality, but differ in many other respects (e.g., the dynamics of prices and real expenditures). We compute the output-inflation volatility frontier of each model for alternative specifications of the interest rate rule, subject to an upper bound on nominal interest rate volatility. Our analysis provides strong support for rules in which the first-difference of the federal funds rate responds to the current output gap and the deviaition of the 1-year average inflation rate from a specified target. In all 4 models, first-difference rules perform much better than rules of the type proposed by Taylor (1993) and Henderson and McKibbin (1993), in which the level of the federal funds rate responds to the output gap and inflation deviation fromt target. Furthermore, first-difference rules generate essentially the same policy frontier as more complicated rules (i.e. rules that respond to a larger number of variables and/or additional lags of output and inflation). Finally, this class of rules is robust to model uncertainty, in the sense that a first-difference rule taken from the policy frontier of one model is very close to the policy frontier of each of the other three models. In contrast, more complicated rules are less robust to model uncertainty: rules with additional parameters can be fine-tuned to the dynamics of a specified model, but typically perform poorly in the other models.

Monetary policy --- Econometric models.

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Income distribution --- Econometric models

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This paper constructs a simple model of home production that demonstrates the connection between the intertemporal elasticity of substitution in market consumption (IES) and the static elasticity of substitution between home and market consumption (SES), when the utility function is additively separable over home and market consumption. Understanding this connection is important because there is a large body of empirical evidence suggesting that the IES is small, but little evidence on the size of the SES. We use our framework to shed light on the properties of a home production model with a low IES. We find that such a model must have two fundamental properties in order to match key aspects of the U.S. aggregate data. First, the steady-state growth rate of technology must be the same across sectors. Second, shocks to technology must be sufficiently positively correlated across sectors.

Business cycles --- Econometric models.

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Integrating the health services and insurance industries (HMOs) could lower expenditure by reducing either the quantity of services or unit price. We compare the treatment of heart attacks and newly diagnosed chest pain in HMOs and traditional plans in two data sets. The nature of these health problems should minimize selection, and OLS and instrumental-variable estimates yield consistent results. HMOs have 30 to 40 percent lower expenditures than traditional indemnity plans. Actual treatments and health outcomes differ little; virtually all the difference in spending comes from lower unit prices. Managed care may yield substantial productivity improvements relative to traditional insurance.

Interest rates --- Econometric models

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We attempt to explain employment practices in internal labor markets using models that combine job assignment, on-the-job human-capital acquisition, and learning. We show that a framework that integrates these familiar ideas captures a number of recent empirical findings concerning wage and promotion dynamics in internal labor markets, including the following. First, real wage decreases are a minority of the observations, but are not rare, while demotions are very rare. Second, there is significant serial correlation in wage increases. Third, promotions are associated with particularly large wage increases, but these wage increases are small relative to the difference between average wages across levels of a job ladder. Fourth, on average, workers who receive large wage increases early in their stay at one level of a job ladder are promoted more quickly to the next level. Fifth, individuals promoted from one level of a job ladder to the next come disproportionately, but not exclusively, from the top of the lower job's wage distribution (and arrive disproportionately, but not exclusively, at the bottom of the higher job's wage distribution).

Wages --- Promotions --- Econometric models.